Changing my Budget for next year

iVillage Member
Registered: 07-14-2008
Changing my Budget for next year
11
Wed, 11-25-2009 - 9:16pm
I was having a look at my budgets over the past six months, and what I have actually spent (when I wrote it down). In most cases, I was not able to stick to the budget completely. I think this was because of two things. The first thing is that I was budgeting $100 per week of pocket money. This was to cover gas, child care after school and spending. I realize now, this was pretty lean. So I am changing it to $100 per week to cover gas(I drive a lot for my job, and commute) and spending. Often the spending is a few groceries, a few dollars to do something with the kids, a lunch out, etc. The after school child care has become part of my regular budget.
The other thing that often throws me off is expenses that I don't foresee for the kids. For example, we decided to put my daughter in ballet. I had to come up with the registration fees even though we had not budgeted for it. I was able to pay cash, but I was frustrated because things didn't go as I planned.
Therefore, I am starting to set aside money for the needs of the kids. I am going to budget $155 per month and see how that goes. In order to do it, I had to cut the amount that I put away for Christmas and for clothing. But, I am completely okay with that. A little less at Christmas is very manageable, and there is always excess in my clothing account, so I guess I had budgeted too much before.
Any changes to your budget for the new year?





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iVillage Member
Registered: 11-02-1999
Wed, 12-02-2009 - 12:25pm

I'm still working on our budget for 2010, but I just finished figuring out our debt snowball plan. If we can keep up the same level of debt payments we currently have budgeted, we will have over $25,000 in debts - a total of 8 creditors - paid off completely by May 2011:

March '10 - Collections #1
April '10 - Credit Card #1
September '10 - Loan #1 (14 months ahead of schedule)
Feb '11 - Car (13 months ahead of schedule), Credit Card #2
April '11 - Collections #2
May '11 - Collections #3 (1 month ahead), Doctor Bill #1

This doesn't count any income tax refund we might get, which we hope to put toward the debt as well (in addition to completing our baby e-fund, if need be).

We've settled pretty well into our cash budgets (grocery, gas, personal, etc.), and we've tweaked the heck out of them already throughout this year. Other than that, I think I'm close to having all of our bills (including all of those niggly "sinking funds" bills) accounted for in the coming year.










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